The Ghost of Whitney Miller
by WenchofNarcad
Summary: Thirteen years after 'From Within', Clay Miller returns to the forests of his haunted past, in a chase disguised as a happy camping trip between he and his own 10 year old son Tommy. What he finds is not exactly what he was looking for.
1. What Lies Hidden

**The Ghost of Whitney Miller**

**Prologue:**

**"She's there." Magnus Brown pranced into the police station with a box of crispy creams and a tray of coffees. "I saw her, I saw her" he sang, "You owe me $20 Marty!"**

**"You got the pictures?" Marty asked, pulling a thin leather wallet from the back pocket of his pants, his every move oozed of disappointment. That was $20 he was never getting back.  
**

**"Yup -" Magnus said, tossing his digital camera onto Marty's desk, for a piece of crap he was surprised it didn't shatter into a million pieces right then and there. Marty retrieved a small 4GB chip from the side of the camera and shoved it violently into his computer, muttering obscenities beneath his breath. Marty waited while his snail-pace computer hummed annoyingly through a downloading process far too advanced for the turd-machine sitting atop his desk.**

**Magnus bit into his donut, his smile revealing crumbs of pastry within his mouth. His smile slowly faded for impatience as Marty flipped through the photographs with a frown of confusion. "There's nothing here Magnus, you got NOTHIN'!" he declared with relief, kissing his wallet and tucking his $20 safely back inside.**

**"You're shittin' me." Magnus moved around the desk. Marty's computer revealed shots of a road side, with trees, and an old wood gate, but nothing else.**

**"She was there when I took the pictures!" Magnus stood over Marty, carelessly dropping crumbs from his mouth onto Marty's head. Marty didn't notice.**

**"You're nuttier than Jiffy" Marty said, and pulled the chip from the computer, throwing it over to Magnus' desk."**

**Magnus stood dumbfounded. He tossed his donut into the trash and took the rest of the day off.**

**From behind his computer screen, it took all Officer Clay Miller had to suppress his anger. He wanted to kill Magnus, slowly. The very idea that his dead sister Whitney was still alive back there somewhere, with _him_, made Clay sick, and that Magnus and Marty constantly joked about it, made strangling both of them with his bare hands seem little more to him than throwing away old and used mouse traps.  
**

**Chapter 1:**

**"Tommy Miller get your butt back here and finish your dinner!" Cheryl angrily loomed over a half eaten plate of pork chops and vegetables. "When your father gets home you're gonna get it!"**

**Tommy rattled himself back to the dinner table, throwing himself upon his chair and whining viciously "But Mom, why? Why should I eat this? Its gross, Its disgusting, you can see the green clouds of smoke coming off it like on Bugs Bunny!"**

**"Just finish your dinner or you're not going camping this weekend!"**

**Tommy's eyes maintained a wide stare, and he quickly cleared his plate. Cheryl smiled to herself, and wondered if all ten year olds were so gullible, or just this one. She headed up to the restroom, combed her chestnut hair, re-did her make-up, and came running down the stairs just in time for Clay to walk through the door.**

**"How was your day honey?" She asked, planting a kiss on his cheek, and hastily grabbing the mail out of his hand. She flipped through the stacks of bills, Clay's science magazines and junk, disappointed that her monthly Home-Chic magazine wasn't here.**

**"Stressful" Clay answered.**

**"Why? What happened?" Cheryl took her son's plate from the table and proceeded to the kitchen,**

**"Agnus came into the office after lunch hour today shouting that he'd **_**seen**_** her."**

**Cheryl shook her head. "Oh dear." she sighed. She knew his sister had died a brutal death a little over a decade ago, and couldn't understand why his colleagues would play such horrid games. "Oh Honey I'm so sorry." She walked up to him and embraced him warmly. "Try not to let them bother you, its Thursday, you get tomorrow off and you're going to give Tommy the adventure of his life!"**

**Clay held to his wife tightly. He had bad feelings already about going into those woods. All week long the anxiety welt up within his chest, and every night leading up to this trip his sleep became shorter and shorter. At first when Cheryl suggested they go camping out there he left the room, wouldn't talk about it, but when Cheryl became suspicious about why he feared the campsite so, Clay decided to give in. He would never tell Cheryl what really happened back there, the last thing he needed was another person, let alone his own wife, thinking he was crazy. The more he thought about it, the more obsessed he became. Those thirteen years Clay had devoted his life to enforcing the law, and readying himself for the one day he would finally catch and murder the man who murdered his sister. Besides, Tommy deserved a normal American childhood. He would not inflict the horrors of his past upon his son... if he could help it.  
**

**"You're right" he said.**

**"Now come eat dinner, and when the cake is ready I'll even let you put the icing on."**

**"Great" he said, with a half smirk. **


	2. Behind Glassy Eyes

**A/N: Hi everyone, I'm doing my best here but this is definitely new territory. I hope you like it.**

**Please, Please, PLEASE review my chapters, I cannot know what I am doing right or wrong if I don't receive any feedback.**

**Thank you to the people who did review - much appreciated ;)  
**

Chapter 2:

The forest at night was quiet, the air was cool, the spring sent a constant breeze through the open window of the house. The light of the full moon provided a view from the window of the swaying trees. Whitney imagined that moon upon the lake, a beautiful reflection upon the still water. Whitney lay motionless upon the bed. Her hair unwashed, her eyes cold and glassy, her lips blue and her skin gray. Not breathing, not moving, yet her mind raged and wandered. She had awoken from another sleep to find once more she could not move. She'd imagined standing by the road a few times, alas it was simply a dream. Now she was awake, still alone, still motionless.

She could not move. After her death he had brought her food, the mutilated flesh of bodies freshly dead, and water, lots of muddied water, and it kept her in motion, but now he had not come through that door in over a year. How he stayed strong on his own she didn't know, but certainly she could not be functionally dead without him. She did not crave the air, she did not feel hunger. It had been so, so long since anything of the sort had filled her lifeless body, she was a corpse upon a bed, his bed, and he was nowhere near. She had not moved from her position since the last day she saw him.

There had been noise that day so long ago out her window, Whitney lay awake upon the bed one sunny afternoon, too weak to move. She heard a struggle, a few men screaming, and a splash. A car sped away up the path, and she had heard nothing since. She knew it had been Jason that they threw into the lake. She could very well remain upon that bed forever now that he was gone, forever upon that bed to stare out the window.

Mold and rot had accumulated upon the floor and walls, from the in-blown winter's snow which had since melted, and the vicious rainstorms, left the room and surely the rest of the house in a delicately disastrous state.

The lake had done something to her, took her life away but somehow her soul sat somewhere within her. She often thought, maybe everyone died like this, maybe there was no afterlife at all, perhaps one simply remained with their bodies for all eternity. Somehow for her, that lake, Crystal Lake, was somehow mystical, it had given her an unearthly ability to reclaim her body, as since she had stopped drinking its water, she was once more, lifeless. She doubted the flesh meal had had anything to do with it.

"Stay in the car, don't move for anything or anybody! stupid car! Leave it up to this piece of shit to break down right here..."

The voice was distant, a mere whisper to Whitney's dead ears, but she heard it, she knew it, she recognized it, that voice. To describe the will to move prohibited by the lack of ability, it was fear, frustration, and panic. Help wasn't a necessity, nothing bad would happen to a still corpse. So why did she wish to cry out so intensely?

The ground was wet and squished beneath the boots of he who was walking. Whoever it was, he was approaching. Now a fear of being found built inside her. If Whitney could not move, Hell only knew what would be done with her. Her mind raced, she wished Jason were here.

"Hello?"

Whitney would have gasped if she could, tried to hide herself, she knew that voice most definitely, she knew him, he was Clay, she thought for sure he had died in the hospital. Was it years ago? It must have been. So much had taken place between their return to the lake and Jason's disappearance. Often the memories kept her calm throughout her transparent bonds. It had been a happy few years of death.

"I need to use a phone. Is anyone here?" The call was cautious yet offensive. His voice rang of fear.

She heard the stairs creek as he approached, closer and closer. He was her brother after all, but she'd rather he fall through the rotten stairs and die than see her lying dead upon Jason's bed, and what's more, he would have no idea that she was fully awake inside.


	3. Proceed

**A/N: Alright you guys, I'm sorry I haven't updated - I've been out of town and incredibly busy with work - (OMG AREN'T WE ALL EXCITED ABOUT FRIDAY THE 13TH COMING OUT JUNE 16th?!?!?!?!?!?!)**

**Anyway, I understand that Whitney's predicament is incredibly confusing now but I promise you there will be lots of action very, very soon. **

**I can't stress enough that you review my chapters, if I don't have your feedback I don't know what you want. Please please PLEASE review - **

**And thank you so much to my loyal readers who have returned for the sequel :) You guys make me so happy!**

**Chapter 3:  
**

Clay approached the bedroom step by step, inching himself along the frail wooden floorboards. Peering over the door frame, his eyes came upon a single leg twisted within tattered bedsheets. He thrust his head back instantly. Another victim, his thoughts raced. There was only one _thing_ capable of murder in these woods, he knew now what he was once more up against.

Clay's mind lapsed back to the police station, was this the girl Marty had seen at the side of the road? Clay's stomach churned, his heart sat still atop his stomach, the hair on his arms and neck rose on end. Only once had he ever been this frightened. She was dead, and she was in there. All he had to do was look.

He didn't want to believe it. He almost couldn't.

Whitney.

She lay with eyes wide open, she was definitely dead, but her eyes had a focus, almost a curiosity to them which no dead woman should have ever been capable of having. The last time he'd seen her, she was between the wall of that hospital, and Jason, the very thought made his blood boil, anger began to mix with his fear and he knew he had to calm himself. Whitney's body looked fresh, it didn't make sense, but the evidence at hand told him the killer was close by.

As much as it disagreed with his tormented stomach, he moved himself forward, actions of pure logic. His heart and soul were far from this place, back at home with his wife, and Tommy would be there too. He felt removed from himself, as though out of his body, floating somewhere nearby watching himself carry out the actions. He picked up Whitney's limp body, she was cold as ice.

He lifted her, and the sheets beneath her were a clean white compared to the thick layer of dust and webs which had accumulated around her. It was as though she'd been lying there for months, years even. Clay chose to ignore this detail, he could not make sense of it. It was far beyond his logic. Jason had kept her alive all these years just to kill her now? No, he could not continue to ask questions. He carried her body from the room, and headed down the stairs, in the dark.

The front door, only a few paces before him, seemed as though to stretch on for miles, his heart thumping as though he'd been running a marathon. He remembered that Tommy was still in the car, he had to get back to him. Images of Tommy's murder forced Clay to move faster and faster. He got to the path and continued on until the car was within his view. He stopped, scanned. Beneath the moonlight he could see the front car door open, and Tommy wasn't there.

Now Clay turned around, Whitney's corpse a dead weight in his arms, he was strong, but not strong enough. He dropped her mid-way along the path and ran back to the house. He did not want to call out for his son, the last thing he needed was for the killer to hear him, and he did not want to make true his slowly brewing nightmares, the thought that it was Jason Voorhees, and that Jason would approach from behind silently, and swiftly remove his own head with that infamous machete.

In the distance, back toward the house, a scream pierced the silence, a scream of utter horror, complete terror. That was Tommy, Clay knew that scream from games they'd once played in the back yard, screams which had once been in laughter were made into screams of terror, a blood curdling shriek. Clay rushed to the lake, his sister's body behind him and forgotten. Tommy stood at the shore, the moon shining its blue light above the rippling water.

"Tommy!"Clay whispered with an authoritative snap, dragging his tired and aching feet through the mud to reach his son. "I thought I told you to stay in the car!"

Tommy slowly turned his head, and looked up at his father, his eyes wide in fear.

"What did you see?" Clay asked. He received no response from his son, in which case he then picked him up in his arms and began to carry him back.

"I'm scared." Tommy finally mustered the courage to whisper, a shaking and broken whisper.

"Ok, we'll get out of here, I promise. We'll walk to the gas station and find a telephone, ok?" As Clay held his son in his arms he realized Tommy's shoes were wet and leaking with water. He put Tommy down immediately.

"Did you touch that lake Tommy?" Clay asked, an intense worry in his eyes. Tommy didn't understand. He just nodded.

"Jesus" Clay muttered beneath his breath.

Tommy looked down at his soaked sneakers, confused.

"What did I do?" Tommy asked.

"I..." Clay found his eyes pulled toward a small lump on the water. It hadn't been there before. He picked up his son and ran for the road.

"Don't make a sound" he told his son, his voice shaky from running. He made incredible efforts to be as silent as possible against the wet ground beneath him. Tommy held onto his father for dear life as they treaded through the grass toward the broken car. He took care not to trip over Whitney's body. She was dead, he would have to leave her there. He knew he was completely out of his mind, but if that really was Jason back there, hopefully her body would provide enough of a distraction to deter him while they both got the hell out of there.

"I'm so sorry Tommy." Clay whispered. "I should not have left you out here alone."

"Its OK Daddy." Tommy said, holding onto his father's shoulders as he carried him toward the car. With the lake behind them, Tommy felt safer, but Clay had not been this mortified in over ten years.

* * *

Whitney fell from Clay's arms and hit the ground hard, her head had tilted toward the car, which she noticed quickly was a cop car. After hearing the boy scream she watched Clay run into the darkness, down that path, which she noticed had become more of a long grass path since the last time she saw it. How long had she been in that house? She found she still could not move, yet she could hear, and from behind her the sound of footsteps, slow and heavy, plunging into the mud one after the other. She could not see who approached, but within her deepest yearnings she could not hope more for anything than to know that he who stood behind her was Jason.

**A/N: Please please please review? I need feedback in order to continue the story the way you want it!**


	4. Cures of Poison

**A/N: Hey - thank you to all of you who reviewed, and thanks to everyone who is reading. I'm really sorry for the delay in chapters - long ago were the days of sitting around the house watching t.v. and writing fanfic - word of warning - the real world is NOT what many pesky adults crack it up to be. **

**Anyways, I hope now to be able to write more. **

**Please please, PLEASE! review, it is so important to me to know what you think about these chapters - your input steers the story and I want to give you what you want to read!**

**Thanks again :) - hope you enjoy.**

* * *

Chapter 4:

The ground beneath her was wet, Whitney lay still frozen atop the grass. Clay was gone he had left her just as he once did. It was just her now, and someone else. Droplets of water fell to her face from an unknown source above, a sensation she never thought she'd experience again. He who stood above her was soaked. She thought for sure she was truly dying now. If she had been in a limbo of sorts on that bed in the house, now it was truly her time to die. The pain, the electric shocks moving through her from head to toe, was surely a punishment for her actions all those years ago.

Whitney lunged forward on the ground, and all she could do was scream. Suddenly and somehow she could feel, and she had forgotten what it was like to feel. The sadnesses and sorrows of her time in paralysis was feeling enough, but it nothing compared to the sensation of her bare palms and knees against the cold wet grass.

The shocks quickly gave way to stillness. Whitney could not understand how this was possible, how she had regained control over her body so suddenly, as though cured. What had been the antidote? On her hands and knees, she turned her head to look over her left shoulder. It was Jason after all, standing still as ever, silent and observant. His machete formed a perfect bridge between both hands, his mask as frightening as ever it had been, that mask she had once torn from his flesh in utter passion.

"Jason." Whitney coughed, she still had not quite regained proper speech. She felt as though her throat had closed and perhaps it had not yet recovered. There was obviously no need for breath but it seemed her voice projection worked in much the same way it had while she was living.

"Jason?" She watched him, watched the water dripping from his arms, from his mask, the same water which had fallen to her face. It was the lake, she then realized, it was Crystal lake which had cured her.

Cold metal rushed toward her, Jason lifted his machete and swiftly attempted to run his blade through her skin. She quickly dodged, and stood. "Jason! No! Its me, Whitney! Can you not remember?" She continued in her struggle to speak. Slowly but surely the words emerged. He tried again, and she fell to her back, he stood tall and powerful above her. "Oh God Jason!"

Whitney wasn't sure what was going to happen. She was already dead, right? He couldn't kill her, could he? If Jason killed her would it be different? She got up and missed one final slice, she ran to the house as fast as she could and upon reaching the door she looked over her shoulder. He quickly followed.

Whitney rushed inside. How had she controlled him before? She quickly scanned the house. She remembered the locket, though where had she placed it? She threw open the floor hatch and carelessly lowered herself into the mine shaft badly scraping her right thigh along the way. In three moments time spent pondering in the heat of fear and hurry, the most disturbing part about this, to Whitney, was that her skin had been scraped but it did not bleed, it were as though she had grated a piece of well cooked meat from her leg. It landed lifelessly upon the dirt of the mine floor.

Whitney shrieked as she heard Jason fall through into the shaft. She was instantly brought back to her first days within the tunnels, how frightened she had been, and how long it had taken her to finally reach out to him. But Whitney knew if he could only see that locket, he would remember her. She didn't understand Jason at all, how he worked, what he was even made of. He wasn't human, of course, if he had ever been human none of what he once was existed now. Was it possible he would never remember her?

She hurried to the corner of her old room, her first room. Her mattress was gone. Material and fabric scraps lay strewn throughout the area, as though animals had come through and shredded everything as they do. But a brown bag lay flat upon the ground in the dirt, and perhaps in there she would find what she was looking for.

She gasped. Two powerful hands thumped down forcefully upon her shoulders, and she nearly collapsed to her knees, but an inner strength from an uncertain source managed to keep her standing. She turned around, and looked up into Jason's eyes, into the eyes behind the mask, and saw his same cold eyes looking down into hers. She had once so passionately held that glance.

"Jason." She whispered. He would either remember her, or kill her. To her utter confusion, he did neither. Jason stood there, his hands a burdening weight upon her frame. Eventually he let go, and reached for his machete.

She grabbed the bag from the dirt and emptied its contents onto the ground. The locket tumbled out and lay open between them on the floor. Jason looked down, as did Whitney. They both saw the likeness of his mother, age had worn the image considerably since the last time Whitney laid eyes upon it, but it was still the same picture, Jason's mother.

With one hand wielding his machete Jason reached for the locket with the other. Whitney took one step back and watched. His eyes were as dark and evil as ever they had been, but if evil could love this was certainly a prime example. Whitney held out her hand to him, but he was unmoving in his glance upon the image of his mother. She retook a slow and careful step forward, her hand held outward still, he was unmoving.

"Jason." Whitney quietly beckoned. Jason seemed not to hear her, or to even notice. Upon her first words to him in what seemed like hours, he turned his back to her, and swiftly moved away.

Unexpectedly, with the anguish this sudden neglect put into her heart, her arms and chest began to pain, as though her emotions had circuited themselves into her entire body. The lake perhaps would cure this as well. She could only hope. Tears made their way from her dead eyes to her dead cheeks. Jason didn't love her.


	5. Life

**Dear Readers,**

**I am so very, very sorry for my extended delay. I have lived a distressing summer, and hope you will forgive me. Also please forgive, if my chapter here is less than satisfactory, I am sure it has something to do with my emotional state. Though I wish to divulge no longer the cause of my malady, I hope you will understand. I am very, very sorry.**

**Please review, and let me know if you want the story to continue.**

**

* * *

  
**

Crickets and owls haunted the woods around him, Clay sat behind a blackberry patch with Tommy huddled closely to his lap.

"Just keep as quiet as you can. Don't breathe loud, don't move." Clay encouraged. Hours may have passed before Marty showed up, just as the dirt road met the paved. What was more frightening than the silence, and the things making noise within it, was the fact that Tommy's mother might be just stepping in or out of the shower, or picking up that book sitting under the lamp on her bed stand, she was at home partaking in the usual, she had no idea that the lives of her husband and only child were in danger.

The police truck appeared from out of the darkness like a mythical white horse. Clay was uncertain at first, but quickly recognized the vehicle as that of his friend Marty, from the cop shop.

"Man, thanks for picking us up pal."

"Damn it Clay, you look like you seen a ghost, or some such spook."

Clay paused briefly, but decided not to speak. To tell Marty anything at this point would be idiotic.

"Just some car trouble, thats all." Was Clay's explanation.

"How you holdin' up Tommy?" Marty asked.

Tommy didn't answer. He sat still in the back seat starring out the back window.

"Well, you want us to drop you home?"

"No." Clay answered. His wife would know for sure something went wrong. "The hotel should be fine."

"The one 'cross from the liquor store?"

"Thats the one."

"Come on Clay, tell the truth. What'dya see?"

"No Marty, not this time. Lets just get back to town and forget this whole thing ever happened."

"Not likely."

"What?"

Marty slammed on the breaks and the three of them flew forward in their seat belts. Clay, Marty, and Tommy starred straight forward through the windshield. Marty's headlights illuminated the man standing before the truck.

"What the fuck is this?" Marty shouted through his window, which was rolled down to the door lock.

"Marty... Don't." Clay urged fiercely.

"What?" Marty looked at Clay, who had suddenly become sickly white, but his eyes were on fire with an anger he'd never seen him express before, not even in the most dangerous of stick ups.

"Who the fuck is this creep? You know him?"

"His name is Jason." Tommy said monotonously. Marty looked to the back seat to find Tommy looking not quite himself. The boy starred like a zombie at that machete, at that filthy tattered hockey mask.

"Hey! Jason! Out of the fucking way before I run you over!" Marty called out the window.

"Marty don't be a fucking idiot!" Clay punched his friend in the shoulder. "Back up and lets get the hell out of here!"

"No man, this moron thinks he can behave like this before the law? And I am the law!" Marty reached into his bag which lay on the floor between the two front seats and pulled out his gun. He threw off the safety immediately and Clay covered his eyes as Marty got out of the truck and pointed it at the masked man who stood just a few feet from the truck.

"Put the weapon down, and put your hands in the air" Marty ordered.

"Fuck Fuck FUCK! MARTY! GET BACK IN THE TRUCK!" Clay hollered.

"LAST WARNING!" Marty cried. Jason took two steps forward and Tommy covered his ears as Marty shot Jason three times in the chest. Jason flinched slightly backward as each bullet went through his flesh, but nonetheless, kept walking forward. By the time Jason had his left hand around Marty's neck Clay was behind the wheel, his foot on the gas pedal. As Jason drove his machete through Marty's throat, Clay left them quickly behind, nothing but dust flying above the road behind them.

Marty's body lay still and lifeless. Jason bent down slowly over the corpse and swiftly cut off it's shirt and bullet proof vest. Cutting into the flesh, he removed the heart. In Jason's hand, it began to beat.

* * *

Whitney could feel her arms, her legs, her joints, beginning to tense up. It was happening again. She was going to die awake, again. She stepped out of the house in a blind panic. She could not move her fingers. She had be awoken before by the water dripping from Jason. She could only assume it was from the lake. Whitney ran as fast as she could to the water and jumped in face first. She was immersed in it, she was breathing in it. She had never experienced such ecstasy. The water filled her, consumed her, poured over her like an electrical storm. And relief filled her as well as she could once again move her hands. It was the water, the waters of crystal lake that kept her in animation. Jason had never needed the lake like this though, Whitney thought. She hadn't seem him come near the water in days before she died. It was her. She would be confined to the camp for the rest of eternity. Without him. She crawled out of the water and sat by the shore, drinking handfuls. She began to weep. If she had only died a normal death. If she had only been allowed to pass from this world she might sleep in peace, and not reduced to dead weeping flesh. If the past five minutes had been treacherous, she could not begin to imagine the centuries of forlorn that awaited her.

And for two days and night Whitney sat by the water and drank. She watched the sun rise, and pass across the sky, and set again. It was a brilliant being, and no doubt worshipers millenniums ago trusted in it. She did not notice a drop in the water level, for she felt certain she would have by now drunk the whole lake dry.

Just as the first light of the third morning came rising up above the trees, she heard a stirring in the wilderness.

Was it him? Whitney stood from the ground and swallowed her last gulp of water. She couldn't see anything for the darkness. If she knew she would die she would surrender to any horrible animal that may be present, allow the bear to shred her to piece, allow the wolf to attack. But to live in pieces, as she felt she already did, was not in her mind the right existence.

But that shimmer in the dark, a clean metal against the early sunrise. And footsteps too soft to be any bear, and too slow to be any pack of wolves. She was still.

Was she fainting? He walked powerfully from the forest and into the clearing. She had stopped breathing? It was not air she needed.

His machete in one hand, a lump of flesh in the other. Her gaze was unmoving from the eyes behind that mask.

"Jason?"

Two feet before her, then one, he stood now so close she could feel his presence with her eyes closed. He held out his hand, it was a heart, and it was beating. She reached out, and took the heart from his hand. Just as she released it from his grasp, it died.

"Oh Jason, look, it isn't beating any more." She placed it back in the palm of his hand and within the second it was alive again. She looked up into his eyes, he was life. He was dead but he was filled with life. When just moment earlier she expected a fate worse than hell, he stood there before her like the most tempting bate she had ever experienced.

"Jason." She ran her hand over the beating heart, its blood leaking onto her arm. "Did you bring this for me?" He didn't move, he didn't speak, but his eyes were upon hers and she took that as a yes.

"My heart lies still within my chest Jason." She said, "Yet the one in your palm beats rapidly." She moved her hand from the heart to his arm. With her other hand she took the machete from him and it fell to the ground. He was unmoving. "It beats wildly." She took the heart from his other hand and dropped it dead in the grass. She embraced him, her arms around his neck, so relieved he had returned to her, and ecstatic that perhaps he did still love her. She allowed her hands over his mask and removed it. She starred deep into his eyes and pressed her lips against his. How long she had spent on that bed in the house for all those years unmoved and unmoving, dead but alive? That she had not seen him, had not been this close to him? She was on fire now, she never wanted to let him go."

"Can you bring me to life Jason? Like you did to the heart?" She whispered against his lips. She pulled him to the ground. The sun was not close to rising yet, but the vaguest light in the distance provided her just enough to see him. His power, his nightmarish presence, the fear was consuming and rapturous. She was his.


End file.
